Sixth
International Metropolis Conference 2001, Rotterdam
. Metropolis Project.
Arch.
Dott. Camilla Perrone (Ph.D student)
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Faculty of Architecture
University of Florence (Italy)
Via
Micheli, 2 I-50121
FIRENZE (Italy)
e-mail: cperrone@unifi.it
Urban geographies of identity
Planning and living practices in two
different multicultural and multiethnic cities: Florence and Toronto
Background
Florence (Italy) and Toronto (Canada)
are definable as two multiethnic and multicultural cities, inhabited, transformed
and . coloured. by people coming from every place in the world,
bringing new identities and different and multiple urban space living
practices.
Since anytime people of many
cultures had been working on social, political and physical building of cities
they have been living in; since anytime people from other worlds and polyhedral
cultural universes have been a resource for revitalisation and support of local
energies.
This is what happened and
happens today in Florence and Toronto where these people from other worlds
became important opportunities to plan a new anthropic and political urban
shape and also to rethink ways to manage the contemporary city and carry out
new governance criteria.
When the city inhabitants are different from one another and bring
specific needs, many situations interact at the same time in the definition of
the physical and political urban shape. Such inhabitants as polyhedral and
multiform social body, claim recognition, living space and citizenship.
For these reasons the
planning answers to the requests of such new inhabitants, should come out from
the survey of cultural and social matters and of the more or less spontaneous
transformation of cities or their parts.
The . colouring. of the urban
space affect our millennium cosmopolis and therefore we must face such a
process in terms of governance, planning policies and practices.
In particular it is
necessary to think of new city governance by empowerment of the new
contributions of communities that try to reshape places within globalisation
matters which are far away from the local dimension of society.
It is particularly
interesting for these kind of issues to compare Florence and Toronto; the first
one as a becoming multiethnic and multicultural city, the other one multiethnic
and multicultural by genesis.
Due to different geographic
social and political character both Florence and Toronto are places where we
can respectively prove and verify new planning practices and governance
criteria.
Florence as a reality of
foreigners living places and Toronto as a city of people and cultures, strongly
felt the consciousness of a political, social and physical change.
The following considerations
are just a synthetic reference to an ongoing Ph.D. thesis on multicultural and
multiethnic city dealing with physical and social shape of the multicultural
and multiethnic past and present cities and also dealing with planning and
governance criteria (Camilla Perrone, . Managing diversity: planning policies
and practices of the multicultural and multiethnic city. ; ongoing
Ph.D. thesis ).
Introduction: setting the stage
Let. s focus on the two
experiences of Florence and Toronto describing some important aspects of the
social and political frame of each of them.
During the last ten years Florence had
undergone conspicuous immigrants
waves from no E.U. countries. These have changed city. s social and
political conditions switching on interaction processes, sometime adversarial,
between autochthonous and immigrants. The all came to deep modification of the
urban living geography and the morphology code of certain outlying areas.
On the other side in Toronto metropolitan area the
immigrants reshape the urban space by directly occupying them so to satisfy
their own needs. The way this happens is a focus of many case studies about
urban living practices. Struggles for space are mostly frequent between
immigrant people and local governments. Usually the conflicts deal with land
use issues in order to provide places for ethnic community facilities and any
other structure immigrants may need. Almost all of the municipalities of the
metropolitan area had been involved in this kind of conflicts.
Keeping in mind this starting
frame let. s see how such different multiethnic and multicultural
cities. urban dynamics could meet on common themes.
Dealing with Florence we will refer to multicultural
living practices for the social and political building of the urban space; in
particular to the urban settlement, space claiming practices and to the making
of political networks to manage diversity.
Dealing with Toronto, which is an historic
multicultural city, we will refer to multicultural planning practices trying to
highlight the changing process from government policies to effective planning
practices.
In Florence the making of the
multicultural city now faces two opposite situations: the formal city (made by
institutions and citizens) that consider the immigrants as improper users and invaders;
the informal city (made by ethnic communities and some local ones) emerging
from social pattern that empowers the social bonds and rebuilds the social and
ethnic mosaic in the metropolitan area.
Local associations and ethnic communities are the main actors of this
new city. They actively work on borderlands, central or outlying, in order to
find out and solve the living, working, social and welfare needs of immigrant
people.
In the Toronto case the management of a multiethnic and multicultural reality
faces the problems of the multicultural planning. Local, metropolitan and
regional governments works together to plan urban polices on such issues. .
What it is meant by Toronto
multicultural planning it is hard to tell clearly. In fact the complexity of
this concept depends on the many interacting themes that create scenarios of
diversity.
Urban policies, social and
physical planning, land use, market rules, housing policies, transport system,
economy, finance and environment interact in defining a multicultural approach
to urban questions.
About Toronto reality it is
important to clarify that a series of simultaneous processes lead to a single
effect: the building of the city for the new inhabitants and citizens.
What are these processes ?
_the ongoing making of an urban and metropolitan .
ethnoscape. (A. Appadurai, 1996);
_the urban growth following
the development of ethnic neighbourhoods and new ethnic city in the
metropolitan areas
_the spreading of big
worship places for all ethnic communities on the metropolitan area
_new housing policies for
the city sprawling
_new social housing policies
in order to contrast the building of ghettos formation and clustering episodes
caused by market policies;
_government strategies for
the social and economic renewal of ethnic neighbourhoods
_new social policies and
community-based planning practices;
So to say a mixed group of
social and political urban processes and complex urban morphology
articulations.
Project management
Considering these two social and
political contests would be interesting to compare the places where foreigners
live in Florence and Toronto. in particular it would be interesting to
understand how both of them are transformed or simply . coloured. by
different living practices. In particular we will focus on three different kind
of places: market, worship and living spaces.
Proper images will be
displayed for the purpose.
Market spaces
Florence
urban space gives many opportunities to ethnic commercial activities and
generates opportunities for social relationships. Basically there are two
different kinds of ethnic markets in Florence: one, done on central streets
following practices compatible with urban spaces, is informal; the other one,
done in little neighbourhoods all over the city and fully managed by
immigrants, is a formal one. Both of them are visible in the central San
Lorenzo district.
In San Lorenzo market place
the informal way to sell things is done through cardboard boxes placed among
legal strip market booths or in front of the central market entrances or by
street corners, on mostly frequented tourist areas and S. Lorenzo church steps.
This happens to escape police control and to prevent conflicts with legal
resellers.
At the same time other more
integrated forms of commercial ethnic activity together with living practices
take place in other areas of the same district.
The San Lorenzo district is
maybe the most ethnically transformed urban sector, full of living practices,
and market activity managed by immigrant people.
It is a district almost
completely re-occupied by new city inhabitants. Time after time the autochthons
have left and students, tourists and foreigners have taken the place and
transformed the urban space following their living pattern. San Lorenzo
district live with its own timings, different from the city ones, mainly
inhabited by African people that occupied waste-areas turning them into ethnic
food and clothing selling shops, phone-shops to facilitate communication with
families, African fashion hair stylists and so on.
Today the San Lorenzo
district is a spontaneous laboratory of multicultural recognition practices and
urban spaces reuse.
In Toronto, on the contrary, ethnic market followed other ways
depending on transformation of the urban economy and physical city shape made
by traditional ethnic communities. The ethnic malls and ethnic strips are
market places of multiethnic and multicultural contemporary Toronto.
The ethnic malls, comparing
to the traditional shopping malls, are a new form of the market system on a
local and metropolitan scale. It refers to a specific urban development
pattern. They represent also an alternative model to the ethnic strip, in
respect to the ethnic question.
Ethnic strips usually arise
in the immigrant reception areas. They start developing to satisfy the ethnic
neighbourhood needs and then, following market rules, become goods stocks for
all the inhabitants living all over the city (Chinatown, Greek Village, Indian Bazar).
The ethnic shopping malls
represent a significant element in defining the new urban development and plan
policies.
They spread through the
borders of a vast still growing urban area becoming physical and economic
centres; they shape a city made of poles that are original for some instances
but traditional and standard in respect to use practices and selling goods.
The ethnic strips take place
in the very heart of the old city of Toronto, in the old immigrants reception
area, keeping the relevant role of economic and social resource for immigrants
and the whole city.
They play an important role
in the shaping of city physical structure and in keeping control at local and
metropolitan scale.
Worship places
Florence has only two mosques; one is more frequented
and geographically more reachable, the other isolated and less frequented. The
first plays a key role for all Muslims. As a matter of fact they can keep in
touch with their far families, local muslim community and build cultural local
identity.
The symbolic, religious and
strategic role played by the Florentine mosque makes it a cultural centre.
Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Syrians, Albanians and other countries
Muslims, frequent the mosque trying to build a Florentine Muslim community. The
mosque works as a Muslim immigration reception and as a school for Islamic
culture and language. Notwithstanding the importance of mosques for Muslim
people, growing in number in the city of Florence, no specific practices and
public policies exist.
The great number of immigrant people and the existence
of many religious beliefs in Toronto,
have caused many urban diversity managing problems in recent time.
The growing number of
churches, mosques, temples and other worship places made evident the need of
making specific planning policies for them respect to multicultural city.
Many different factors fuzzy
interact in the making of the ongoing processes and is very difficult to
clarify all the different situations. Anyway it is important to keep in mind
two urban reshaping process:
-
the definition of the new urban landscape and
spreading of new kind of worship places that give an ethnic footprint on the
urban space and bring new identity values. Sometimes these places are local
community self-made and give a contribution to the development of urban
services, housing and viability;
-
growing and diffusion of immigrant people with
differentiate beliefs and ethnic origins.
Today the above mentioned
process refers only to the mosque case and so it is impossible to give an
homogeneous representation of the Toronto municipality approach to the question
(M. Qadeer, 2000).
Urban policies and actual urban plan
process don. t foresee specific procedures for placing the worship areas.
The administrative projects approval procedures don. t differ from the
ones applied to other cases.
The proposal of the religious community
for the building of a mosque and the consequent municipal approval process
for its design, often generate public contrasts and local residents controversies
that reflect on the urban plan practices. Debates are apparently based
not on cultural expressive needs but on neighbourhood. s aesthetic
coherence and homogeneity.
Two interpretations of the
municipality policies about this questions coexists: an optimistic and a
pessimistic one. The first tends to verify equity, effectiveness and
correctness in respect to administrative procedures (M. Qadeer, 2000). The
other one, referring to citizenship and struggles for the recognition of
diversity, concerns government policies and how they wrongly face ethnic issues
and multicultural planning practices (E. Isin, M. Siemiatycki,
1997).
Living space
One of the first needs for
an immigrant in a foreign country is the rebuilding of its own identity. The
living space is the mean to obtain this goal during all the integration process
with the new reality.
In the Florence case it is interesting to observe the living practices
referring to a particular place: a whole urban productive district on the
western Florentine outskirt placed along the Arno river including a sequence of
historic suburbs and wide industrial plant areas. In this area two different
living forms take place: the formal directly linked to the productive
activities and the informal one linked to local spaces availability and
resources.
The first, practiced by
Chinese people, comes from living and productive organized forms. The second
one, practiced by gipsy and Albanians, comes more from bad urban policies than
immigrants communities self-government.
Let. s see in depth the two
cases:
1. Chinese community living
places (Colombo M., Marcetti C., Omodeo M., Solimano N.,
1998) are linked to productive
places following effective strategies of work time and resources usage. This
process has come in determining a slow but constant changing of the residential
and public spaces.
The recent Chinese immigrants families live in industrial
buildings: adults, children, different generations of the same families, share
the same living and working space. The space inside the industrial building is
divided in square areas each of them being assigned to one family and separated
from the others by provisional divisions or panels. Home-work commuting times
are actually eliminated and this is a considerable advantage especially for the
first integration phases when Chinese are forced to a hard working timing.
A small minority of the community is recently
introducing different living practices by substituting autochthonous. Second
generation Chines family use a great part of their gains to buy a house. The
whole Chinese community is slowly taking possession of all spaces in the area
transforming the urban scenario through micro-transformation of houses and open
spaces. It occupies squares, streets, patios filling them with sounds and smells,
reshaping the old suburbs of this area through living practices and .
colouring. of public space.
2. Gypsies settlements, whether illegally self
built or officially assigned by the municipality, are places spatially
organised following at least five actions that might be considered as insurgent
urbanism actions (Holston J., 1999): taking possession of land, defining
borders, building of a own living place, building a sense of belonging to the
local social contest, claiming rights.
In Toronto case it is important to point out the two following
factors: the presence of rich and pour immigrants
and the coexistence of first and second generation ones. To each one of
these factors correspond different living practices and different subsequent ways
of making a local immigrant people identity. Let. s see how this happens from
the actual living practices point of view:
-
the . Old City of Toronto. ethnic neighbourhoods are
the result of different living urban geography depending on different
immigration waves and on income levels;
-
Gated communities (as the Woodbridge Italian case) are
the consequence of the economic and social fragmenting of communities and of
the inter-communities discrimination;
-
. monster homes. (A. Smart, J. Smart, 1996) are the
consequence of the new rich immigration from China (Hong Kong) expressing new
needs of visibility and social and economic status as a result of global
economy.
Conclusion and policy implication
Up
to now we have been showing social political issues about multiethnic and
multicultural city governance. The aim of this excursus has been to present two
different cases about urban multicultural practice: living practices (Florence
case) and planning practices (Toronto case). In this way we have tried to
explain how the reshaping of cities is following multicultural and multiethnic
configuration and how it is important to understand the relevance of diversity
managing so to turn it to a new millennium resource.
For
this purpose it is fundamental to individuate the characters of the growing
multicultural city studying the spontaneous living practices of the immigrants
(this is the Florence case). At the same time it is important to understand the
complex governance processes in a multicultural city (this is the Toronto
case).
[Following
are the two plausible frames for Florence and Toronto.]
Florence urban geography and social practices
For Florence we can consider
an emerging multicultural-scape from a recently highly changing immigration
reality.
Each immigrant or group of immigrants acts in
the urban space changing it and drawing different living geographies: informal
living geographies (gypsies and Albanians small shanty towns in the western
outskirts); defensive urban living geographies (illegal Senegal people selling
strategies so to avoid police control); needs net geography (Somalis demands
for assistance); polar geography of social connections (Filipinos and Somalis
taking possession of central public spaces); productive geographies (Chines
taking possession of a whole industrial area in Florence); individual survival
geography (Albanians informal living practices) and so on.
Sometimes these geographies transform the
physical space structure, otherwise they just colour the historical dense urban
spaces.
A dialogue between planning
policies and practices for a multiethnic and multicultural Toronto
For Toronto case it. s
interesting to highlight a comparison between current planning practices and
planning policies.
It is possible to
individuate two basic ways of defining the plan guidelines: setting the urban
planning and managing the urban policies choices.
In the first case it is evident
an approach that tends to preserve the relationship between both urban shapes
and social communities maintaining the identity of . special. urban
places.
Usually these are the . Old City of Toronto.
neighbourhoods and immigrants reception areas that have been reshaped by all
the different people and cultures that lived in there and are today places full
of social and formal events. In these places the planning allows local identity
preservation: the .Official Plan. identifies
. special identity areas. where to control transformation processes
and save identities; Neighbourhoods
Improvement Plan and Community
Improvement Plan regulate neighbourhood specific projects, sometime
community-based, control land use questions and organise the distribution of
community worship places.
The second case concern
planning practices that take in consideration ethnic and cultural diversity of
the neighbourhood inhabitants. There are no specific urban diversity management
instructions, For the planning practice would be very much welcome. Land use
conflicts arising from cultural and religious diversity force planning
practices to face a multicultural and plural reality. This comes to a case by
case consideration without any general multicultural planning frame.
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